Recalling Aligarh and Udaipur

These are passages from the unpublished and incomplete memoirs of the writer on the first anniversary of his death. Ahmad Ali Khan, who died on March 13, 2007, was Editor/Chief Editor of Dawn from 1973 to 2000 and again in 2003-04. He was the longest serving editor of this newspaper who steered Dawn through the most difficult times for the print media in the history of Pakistan without compromising its independence and credibility….

THE four years at Aligarh were in several ways an enriching experience for me, both academically and in other ways.

There were a few outstanding teachers whose commitment to learning and to teaching were a source of inspiration; teachers like Prof M. Habib of the political science department, Dr Hadi Husain, Professor Khawaja Manzoor Husain, who taught us English literature, to mention only a few of the more distinguished members of Aligarh’s academia. Of course the average faculty member was not too good. There were some senior teachers who fell into a category of their own. For instance, as Vice Chancellor Dr Ziauddin Ahmed handled matters of institutional policy.

Of course there were others like Prof A.B.A. Haleem (Abba Haleem to some boys because of his authoritarian manner and paternal airs) whose primary interest seemed to be in administration. He was known to have specialised in the study of the French revolution and was said to be good at it when he began. But after he became Pro-Vice Chancellor he had less and less time for studying the latest literature on the subject.I was summoned to meet him on three different occasions. At the first such meeting he asked me to clarify my position on what he had been told about my intellectual leanings. He said he had been informed that I was quite interested in atheism and socialism. “Mein ney suna hai ke aap ko atheism aur socialism sey kafi dilchaspi hai” (I have heard that your interest is in atheism and socialism).

Regarding the first charge, I said I had made no claim about being an atheist in any conversation with anybody. And I added that if anybody had arbitrarily formed any opinion about my religious beliefs without directly discussing those supposed beliefs with me, I was not bound to accept that opinion. This matter disposed of, I pleaded guilty to the second charge, namely, that concerning socialism.

As I said I was interested in socialism and was keen to understand its meaning and purpose, I was subjected to a spontaneous viva voce. Prof Haleem rattled off one question after another at a good speed to test my knowledge of the subject. I don’t remember the wording but I was supposed to offer definitions of Fabian socialism, guild socialism and Marxian socialism and to say how one differed from the other. As he finished with his questions, I knew I had passed the test.

I was required to present myself before Prof Haleem on two other occasions and in both these cases I was really at fault for having acted rashly and provocatively. On one occasion I rode a tonga and using a loudspeaker invited listeners to a public meeting of leftists to be held in Aligarh city. This tonga was fitted with two red flags, one on each side. I should have known that nobody had been doing this kind of thing on the university campus. Besides, it was a useless venture since the university had already been captured by the Muslim League.

As I was passing the road behind the S.S. Hall boundary four boys, each of sturdy build, came and stopping the tonga took strong exception to the use of the red flag. They were very angry. Therefore I and Comrade Siddique who was accompanying the tonga on a bicycle offered to remove one red flag and replace it with a Muslim League flag. A League flag was provided and was duly hoisted on one side using a rope.

The angry boys then insisted that I stop the announcement and accompany them to the house of Prof Haleem. The latter was very annoyed with me and with Siddique. He ordered that the announcement be stopped and noted down my name and the name of my boarding house. Next morning I found a brief notice posted on a notice board near the entrance to my hostel saying that I had been fined Rs10 for “taking out an unauthorised procession”.

The bursar’s office never asked me to pay the fine and I still owe Rs10 to the university on this account. The third time I had to appear before Prof Haleem was when I committed an act of premeditated indiscretion by distributing in broad daylight a leaflet which contained derogatory remarks against M. Mohsin Siddiqui, one of the candidates contesting for the office of the vice-president of the Union.

Mr Siddiqui later became a political leader and a factory owner in Pakistan. He was assassinated a long time ago in Karachi. I was working for Mr Nusrat Hassan, who was my roommate (Mr Hassan held a number of high official posts and now lives in Karachi after his retirement. We continue to be good friends).

While distributing the leaflets I was intercepted by a group of boarders, mostly senior boys who ‘arrested’ me and presented me before Prof Haleem. This was the second time I was appearing before him as an accused, leaving aside the first occasion when I was asked to defend my ‘subversive’ views. I was quite worried. I knew that I had violated the unwritten Aligarh code according to which any printed material against a candidate in the Union elections was distributed only in the darkness of the night.

The person engaged in such activity — it was called “anti-work” in the Aligarh parlance — had to take care that he was not caught in the act. The impugned leaflet was produced before Prof Haleem who looked at it. Then two fierce eyes glared at me making me quite nervous since I had no defence to offer.…

* * * * *

Udaipur experience

For eight months in 1945-46 I became an active participant in political life without admitting the fact to myself. My career as a professional journalist began at the end of this period in which I gave all my time and energies to active public life. The unplanned exposure to the nitty-gritty of politics taught me a lesson or two about mass psychology, political interactions, the art and dynamics of political mobilisation, strategy and tactics and about advance and retreat. This is something no school of journalism teaches.

In the winter of 1945-46 (I don’t remember the exact dates) I went through an experience which was highly instructive for me personally but which is also of considerable public interest. In the absence of some leaders who were in prison I was elected as one of the delegates to the annual session of the All-India States’ Peoples’ Conference held at Udaipur, Mewar, a state of former Rajputana. The outgoing president of the AISPC was Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru and its incoming president was Shaikh Mohammad Abdullah.

The AISPC was the apex body for a vast network of pro-Congress organisations — affiliates — working in the various princely states, each with a local name, the commoner name in Hindi being Lok Parishad. Each affiliate had as its goal the achievement of responsible government in the state concerned but the broader all-India objective of all was to lend support to the Congress demand for the independence of India.

Immediately upon arrival at Udaipur, I was told that a meeting of delegates who were Communist sympathisers was to be held in the evening to plan a common line of action at the conference. A communist leader from Indore state, a neighbouring principality to the west of Bhopal, who was also attending as a delegate knew me and invited me to the informal moot. I agreed to attend. The meeting was held behind closed doors. A large number of delegates from many states, including the erstwhile Hyderabad state, were present. Incidentally, there were more from Kashmir, and I was the only one from the Bhopal contingent and the only Muslim to be present.

The meeting place was a dingy but large room in a ramshackle house which was approached through a muddy lane. Everybody sat on the floor and spoke in low tones. The room was dimly lit. Altogether a perfect setting for a conspiracy, especially a communist one. What lent an aura of mystery to the occasion was a locally made crude-looking rifle about six feet long. The presence of dark-complexioned, native and tough-looking armed Bhils in a meeting, whose mostly young participants belonged to the sophisticated middle-class intelligentsia, seemed patently incongruous. It, nevertheless, added colour to the occasion.

The meeting decided to table amendments to the two main resolutions that were to be placed before the annual session. One amendment related to the demand for responsible government in each state to be instituted “under the aegis of the ruler”. The amendment sought full responsible government maintaining that the conference leadership was whittling down the states’ peoples’ right to unqualified representative self-rule.

The other amendment related to the first resolution demanding immediate national independence. The amendment approved by our conclave urged the leaders of the AISPC and of the Indian National Congress to accept the right of self-determination of the Muslim-majority regions in the north-west and north-east of India.

I do not have the text before me but the Communist caucus which drafted the amendment clearly meant Pakistan, even though the word Pakistan was perhaps avoided. Choosing the names of the proposer and seconder of this crucial amendment was a matter that called for a good deal of care. Those conducting the proceedings of the conclave did not ask for suggestions. They simply announced two names which had obviously been decided beforehand by a coterie.

Before they did so I tried to guess who the conclave will select for this difficult role. There were some very senior and more experienced persons present. But to my utter surprise they chose me, the only Muslim in the meeting, as the mover.

(Me, the mad, they picked)

For the second their choice was a tall, hefty Sikh gentleman with broad shoulders and a luxuriant white beard. His name was Dr Phool Singh and he hailed from the Sikh-ruled state of Patiala.Both our amendments were of a controversial nature in a conference dominated by “nationalists” (for which read followers of the Congress), the pro-Pakistan amendment especially so. I and the Sikh gentleman made short speeches in which we pleaded that the Congress take its professed support for self-determination to its logical conclusion by conceding the demand for Pakistan. This was wholly unexpected.

The audience of delegates which had so far presented a picture of perfect tranquillity and harmony suddenly caught a whiff of dissent. The smug complacency of the house seemed to yield place to tension. Pandit Nehru who was presiding over the session called upon Shaikh Abdullah to oppose the amendment. The Shaikh declared that while the Congress and its supporters did accept the right of self-determination of people on a territorial basis, they thought it would amount to a distortion of the principle if the right was invoked on behalf of a religious community.

The Pakistan demand, he asserted, was not being raised on behalf of the people living in an area or areas without discrimination, it was a communal demand motivated by narrow religious considerations, hence reactionary. In the end Mr Nehru himself spoke on the amendment. He pointed out that as a secular party, the Congress was in principle opposed to a division of India on a religious basis.

Nevertheless the Congress might ultimately examine the possibility of conceding the demand in order to bring freedom nearer, but he most emphatically ruled out the idea of anybody walking away with territory in which the others (he meant non-Muslims) were in a majority.

The speech was in Hindustani and his words were: “magar aap saath mein un areas ko bandh kar naheen le ja sakte jahaan aap ki majority naheen hai” (but you cannot take away with you those areas where you do not have a majority). Though a mere novice in politics, I knew then that the Congress would not only insist on partitioning Bengal and Punjab but would fight for retaining every single inch of territory in the process. The partition of the two provinces was sometimes being talked about as a certainty in the event of India’s division, but hearing Mr Nehru on the subject and noting his patently belligerent tone, I felt very apprehensive about the future.

I could never forget his words nor the manner in which he uttered them. And whenever I think of the tragedy of Kashmir there arises before my mind’s eye a vivid picture of Shaikh Abdullah dressed in a dark coloured sherwani and shalwar and wearing a mohair cap pleading at the instance of Mr Nehru against the Pakistan demand. Nor is it possible to fail to recall the crude irony of the fate that befell that devoted secularist and loyal Congress ally who also happened to be a close associate of Mr Nehru. He spent years in prison under New Delhi’s orders.

Reverting to the amendment, the voice vote, as was certain, went overwhelmingly against us. But in a move which many delegates must have regarded as sheer mischief I stood up to challenge a division. This was not really called for since the verdict of the voice vote was absolutely clear. Nevertheless Mr Nehru did not demur and asked the house to divide, the ‘ayes’ on one side and the ‘noes’ on the other. Then he came down from the dais and counted. We got 30-35 votes and the opponents of the amendment got about 600.

Then Mr Nehru looked towards me and with a tolerant smile on his face, which suggested that he was not too cross with me for the nuisance I had caused, asked, “Are you satisfied now?” I told him I was. The matter of the amendment thus came to a close.

Conditional transition?

IS army chief Gen Ashfaq Kayani more ‘professional’ than his predecessor? Several political pundits, and even some politicians, seem to think so. As evidence, they cite the reported withdrawal of military officers from the civilian bureaucracy and the alleged disengagement of the military intelligence services from electoral rigging on his orders.

If implemented in letter and spirit, these are no doubt positive steps towards a transition to civilian rule. But before we yield to the temptation of cheerleading for the military’s new-found ‘professionalism’, it is important to understand the larger political context in which these changes are taking place as well as military organisational motives.

For one, and not surprisingly, the messages emanating from GHQ in the aftermath of the elections point more to continuity rather than a change in military perceptions of democratic politics. In the wake of the latest Corps Commanders’ Conference, Gen Kayani customarily pledged the military institution’s support for the incoming elected government while at the same time dispelling the growing impression that the generals were at odds with Musharraf, so what if in his dubious presidential capacity he is arguably the central hurdle to a timely and ordered transfer of power to elected civilians. And in the same breath, Kayani called for a “harmonised relationship between various pillars of the state as provided in the Constitution”, warning that “any kind of schism, at any level, under the circumstances would not be in the larger interest of the nation”.

He went on to warn civilians of the dangers of “unnecessarily dragging” the army into the political sphere. Publicly assured of the commanders’ support, Musharraf wasted no time in echoing his own conditional support for the incoming government: “I will fully support the new coalition governments [if] the political parties demonstrate prudence and focus on governance and this is possible only if all of them demonstrate peace.” This is buck-passing at its best. After all, the deterioration of “peace” in Pakistan is the result of military rule since 1999. No less, the worst violations of constitutional norms have been pure military operations, such as Musharraf’s Nov 3 martial law in the guise of emergency, designed to sort out non-compliant civilian institutions and individuals.

It is quite convenient for the military to explain away its intervention and political influence on the tendency of civilians to invite it in for mediating political conflicts and restoring order. But, as Samuel Finer and other scholars have argued, the opportunity to intervene does not equal intervention.

The military’s political behaviour is not shaped by civilian preferences. Organisational motives are crucial in the decision to intervene or withdraw from politics. The defence or advancement of the military’s corporate interests — relative autonomy from civilian interference, resources, and status in society — is one key motive. Thus the military is doing no one any favour by formally disengaging from governance. It is in a calculated tactical retreat to the barracks designed to stem the rapid decline in its public image and prestige triggered by the events of March 9, 2007 when the generals under Musharraf tried to force the chief justice out of office. In fact, the widespread public questioning of the army’s political role induced the fear in the officer corps that a direct association with an authoritarian political order could lead to irreversible damage to its reputation. Besides, why govern directly in the face of popular discontent when its embedded structural power can ensure that the army gets what it wants.

The incoming PPP-PML-N coalition government will gain formal state power in a post-military context marked by the perversion of democratic norms and practices and weakened state institutions which will make it increasingly difficult for it to square the circle of governance. Not to mention the high expectation-capacity gap which is likely to determine its perceived success or failure over time.

But before it comes to that, the coalition faces a dangerous threat in the shape of Musharraf, an antagonistic figure conspiring to retain his anti-democratic presidential powers, such as the notorious 58-2(b) designed to arbitrarily sack civilian governments. It is plain for everyone except the military (and perhaps the Bush administration) that Musharraf and his constitutional distortions have no place in the new order and the longer he stays in office, the more likely it is that the civil-military fault-lines will deepen.

Musharraf or no Musharraf, the deep-rooted nature of praetorianism in Pakistan means that establishing lasting civilian supremacy over the military is no easy task. The sheer complexity of the economic, political and security problems facing the country means that civilian politicians, once in office, might be tempted to focus on day-to-day governance and leave the military to its own devices. Hoping that the new army chief will reverse military praetorianism of his own volition is obviously not a strategy. His recent statement conveyed a rather menacing message: the army is willing to put up with democracy for now. But what is given might be taken away if civilians don’t behave themselves.

From a democratic standpoint, the PPP and PML-N have made all the right noises and taken all the right steps so far. The apparently historic ‘Murree agreement’ on the restoration of the pre-Nov 3 judiciary indicates that the two parties are strategically inclined to peg their political fortunes to fulfilling the popular demand for the rule of law. Their continuing emphasis on implementing the Charter of Democracy is possibly a reflection of their genuine desire to restructure civil-military relations. The Charter contains concrete proposals to this effect, such as making the military and its intelligence agencies accountable to the elected government, rationalisation of military structures and parliamentary oversight of the military budget.

Despite heavy odds, they do have the rare opportunity to reshape politics in a democratic direction. The real test will obviously come when they are in power.

as2552@columbia.edu